Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are remotely piloted or self-piloted aircraft that can carry cameras, sensors, communications equipment, or other payloads. They have been used in a reconnaissance and intelligence-gathering role for many years. More recently, UAVs have been developed for the purpose of surveillance and target tracking.
Autonomous surveillance and target tracking performed by UAVs in either military or civilian environments is becoming an important aspect of intelligence-gathering. However, tracking a moving target on the ground, such as a ground vehicle in motion on a road, with an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) presents various difficulties that need to be addressed in order to have an effectively autonomous surveillance and target tracking system. For example, if there are minimum speed limits for the unmanned aerial vehicle, such as any fixed-wing UAV would have, the ground vehicle can easily give the slip to the tracking UAV. Another difficulty that needs to be addressed in a system for autonomous tracking of a moving target is the delay and noise inherent in visual recognition.